A Man for Every Embarrassment - Putin’s New Calendar and the Art of Eternal Self-Adoration

Russia is in season again - at least the kind you hang on your wall when you are politically completely desensitized. The new Putin calendars for 2026 are here, and as every year, the Kremlin tries to sell the country the illusion that its president is not a 72-year-old autocrat and war criminal, but a mixture of action figure, hobby god and fitness trainer on steroids.

January: Putin on a snowmobile.
February: Putin throwing someone onto the mat, probably preemptively.
March through December: Putin, Putin, Putin - and plenty of quotes that sound as if someone had run macho fridge magnet slogans through Google Translate.

“Russia’s border never ends,” he trumpets at the start of the year. A sentence that feels like the desperate wish of a man who knows geography only from the propaganda department. In February he calls himself a “dove with iron wings.” That does not sound like a head of state, but like someone who has spent too much time paging through old Soviet comics. But Putin would not be Putin if he did not also appear as a life coach. For August he recommends: “Sleep little, work a lot, don’t whine.” Sounds fine if you are an oligarch. Less fine if you are lying in the Donbass wondering why you are supposed to die for the whims of a man who believes he is the seasons themselves.

And of course no image of the war in Ukraine - one would not want the calendar to accidentally depict reality. The war remains a “distant incident,” a bit like a forgotten item on a shopping list. If Putin were a German politician, he would long be on tour with peacemaker Tino Chrupalla, who also tells people that everything is only half as bad - as long as you ignore facts and admire your own lines.

The similarity between the two is striking:

• Both love the pose of the strong leader.
• Both stage themselves with lines that belong better on a fridge.
• Both believe that you can run a country by simply blocking out reality.

Putin sells his calendars for the equivalent of 3.50 dollars. A bargain, considering you can spend twelve months watching a man try to disguise himself in ever new roles just to hide that he is politically and geologically stuck, a war criminal wanted under an arrest warrant.

The calendar also serves a purpose: It shows how hollow the entire system has become. A president who has clung to office for a quarter century celebrates himself as the “man for every season,” even though he has led the country into an economic dead end and ignited a war whose consequences will be felt for generations. Suggest stability - leave chaos behind. It is the Russian variant of the AfD model. And for anyone still wondering whether to buy the Putin calendar: no worries. If you do not make it this year - Putin has already bent the constitution so he can remain in office until at least 2036. That means more than 4,000 days left to buy a calendar featuring a man who has spent decades pretending he is eternal.